Another slice of Nordic noir

Hermann Hesse ‘is almost as important as a presence as he is for anything published’

modernist/post-modernist/cybernetic project in one. Hesse himself said that das Glasperlenspiel “is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture”.

The Magister Ludi – “Gamesmaster” has such a contemporary resonance – improvises with the great art of the past the way a painter might improvise with his palette, or an organist make use of every stop and pedal to create an infinite kaleidoscope of experience, unique to the individual.

This is more than just sitting round a campfire, blowing weed and muttering haikus. Decker sums up Hesse’s philosophical resting place brilliantly, dismissing a lot of the cultural charges in the process: “This stoic withdrawal into a kind of exile, which can also be a protective place in which to cloister oneself away from the violence of the prevailing political world, became the setting for The Glass Bead Game.”

perpetrator’s killing spree. But the so-called Chestnut Man is always one step ahead – until Hess counters his next move by unearthing a dark past.

To reveal more would be to spoil all. Suffice to say that Sveistrup leads and wrongfoots us through numerous twists, turns, cliff-hangers and red herrings to an outcome which is as bold as it is explosive. As with The Killing which sprawled over 20 one-hour episodes yet didn’t lose momentum, The Chestnut Man comprises 500 pages but unfolds at a frenetic pace. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy of crime novels suffered from padding, not least the characters’ umpteen breaks for coffee and sandwiches. In stark contrast, Sveistrup makes every page count.

More faint-hearted readers may disagree. In some passages Sveistrup lays the grisly detail on thick and veers close to overkill. His bogeyman demonstrates his expertise with saws, axes, awls and machetes. Hess sifts “A grotesque, sadistic potpourri” of crime-scene images. And as if a visit to one secret, soundproofed basement wasn’t enough, Sveistrup takes us into two. “At first glance there’s nothing frightening about the room,” we are told, “apart from the sheer fact that it exists.”

Foul deeds abound, almost always against women and children. But Sveistrup’s violence has a twofold purpose. It allows him to shine a light on the evil that men do and it enables us to root for his detectives. The novel is at its most compelling when it focuses on them and their sleuthwork. Again and again they find themselves spurred on by warped logic, loose links and forensic discrepancies. Why are there no traces of bone dust on the blade of the weapon used for butchering? Why is there more than one blood type at a crime scene? And just what connects each victim?

Occasionally Sveistrup’s prose lets him down: he serves up metaphors that are mixed (“you’ve been yanked back into the ring to make the pill go down more easily”) or overwrought (“the question was as riddled with mines as a supply road in the Middle East”). But when he tells it straight, ups the stakes and amplifies the suspense, it is hard to find fault and a joy to be so immersed on the edge of a seat.